SET WORK 4:‘Peripetie’ from Five Orchestral Pieces

Composed by Arnold Schoenberg

Area of Study 2: Music in the 20th centuryGenre: Expressionism and Serialism

Music in the 20th Century

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYUPrdPX_i8

This young man covers most of the features you will need to know:

The composer:

Interesting facts about Schoenberg• In 1918 he founded the Society for Private Musical Performances, at which, neither critics nor

applause were allowed.

• When Schoenberg's music was first performed in turn-of-the century Vienna, it provoked catcalls, hisses, fistfights and brawls.

• Schoenberg was also a painter of considerable talent

• He had a fear of the number 13 and he actually died

on Friday 13th???.....

Expressionism and Serialism:

Background information• Five Orchestral Pieces was a set of atonal pieces for full orchestra composed in the summer of

1909

• Peripetie comes from a greek word that means ‘sudden changes’. He didn’t want to give each movement a title, but his publisher thought it was a good idea – the titles were added in a later edition of the work

• They last between 1-5 minutes and are not connected to each other by the use of any thematic material. Peripetie is about 2 minutes long, but he manages to cram a lot into it

• In 1908 Richard Strauss asked Schoenberg to send him some short pieces for him to look at. Schoenberg had not written any pieces for orchestra since 1903 as he had been experimenting with his ideas of atonal music in much smaller-scale works. Unfortunately his pieces were not well received well, Strauss himself said:

“It would be better for him to shovel snow than to scrawl on music paper!”

Strauss refused to conduct it and it was not performed until September 1912, where it was performed at the Proms in London conducted by Sir Henry Woods. It was performed again in 1914 and Schoenberg himself conducted this time

• Schoenberg liked to conceal things within his compositions. One of his main ‘codes’ concealed within Schoenberg’s pre-serialism music is the use of a group of notes called a hexachord – a group of six notes that can be played together to form a chord. They can also be used to form short melodic ideas if they are played one after the other.

Instrumentation:• By the end of the romantic period, orchestras were huge. They would often have full woodwind sections and lots of percussion• Schoenberg wrote his 5 orchestral pieces for a big orchestra. It allowed him to make lots of contrasts in texture,

timbre and dynamics. • The parts are tricky – lots of instruments play very high or very low• There are big leaps in pitch too, sometimes more than an octave

• When Schoenberg revised the piece in 1949, he changed the instrumentation a bit. He used fewer instruments, reducing the number of clarinets, oboes, bassoons, horns and trombones. This made it a bit more accessible for smaller

orchestras.

Analysis:Peripetie is a very dramatic piece. Schoenberg uses lots of sudden changes in texture, dynamics and timbre to make it sound exciting

Structure:• It has an unusual structure, Schoenberg didn’t like conventional structures • Peripetie is almost a rondo form – the same melodic idea returns a few times. Some people say it is a

free rondo. The sections are different lengths and the textures and tempos change in each section• The free rondo structure is made up of five sections – it goes ABA’CA” (A’ and A” are variations on

Section A)

Harmony:• It is atonal – not in a key. Schoenberg uses the hexachords to create dissonances• Schoenberg uses pitches and harmonies for effect rather than because of their relationship to each

other. He was concerned with the combination of timbres rather than with melody and harmony

Dynamics:• There’s a wide range of extreme dynamics - from pp to fff. The dynamics change very quickly

Texture/Timbre:• There are sudden changes of texture. In some places, lots of instruments play different parts, all

weaving in and out of each other (polyphony or counterpoint). At other points, the texture is much thinner and you can hear a solo instrument, like a clarinet or flute

• Schoenberg changes the timbre a lot as well. There are quick changes between families of instruments like woodwind, strings and brass. This changes the sound of the piece.

Analysis continued:Melody:

• This piece is an example of Klangfarbenmelodie ( a German word meaning tone-colour-melody) The name was made up my Schoenberg, and it is a technique he used to break up a melody by passing it around different parts. It gives the tune variations in timbre (tone colour)

• There isn’t an obvious melody. He uses melodic fragments and complicated, fragmented rhythms. Each fragment is based on a hexachord – a group of six notes from the 12 different semitones. The six semitones not used in the hexachord are called the complement. The motif we hear in the first section can be described as a hexatonic fanfare

• In 1952 there was a revision of the score. Edits have been made to show which instrument has the main melodic line at any given time and there are marks in the score indicating which these are, including in one section which instruments have the secondary main motif.

• Schoenberg gives us a helping hand by bracketing the main melodic ideas with an ‘H’ symbol (see score) which stands for Hauptstimme – German for principal part and the ‘N’ symbol (see score) which stands for Nebenstimme – a part of secondary importance

Rhythm:

• He uses lots of different note lengths - from demi-semiquavers to semibreves• Sextuplets – a group of six semiquavers in the space where four would normally be

Analysis continued:Performance directions:

• This movement is marked Sehr rasch (very fast) and it is only 66 bars long. Schoenberg gives other instructions during the piece, like heftig (passionate) and ruhiger (calmer)

• Divisi is used at the start of the string parts meaning that the players divide into grooups, each of which plays a different note of the chord

• Pizzicato – an instruction for string players to pluck the string• Arco – an instruction for string players to use their bows• ‘bell up’ b34 – trumpet instructed to point their trumpets upwards in order to produce a loud brassy

sound• 1 solo in cello part means that only person should play it, tutti then instructs others to join back in• Tremolo on cymbal – tremolo with a cello bow, tremolo also on last chord for double basses• Asked to play close to the bridge which produces a thin and icy shimmering sound• + signs to tell horn player to insert their hand further than normal into the bell of the instrument to

produce a thin nasal sound• Strings and brass asked to play with mutes in a number of passages too

Breakdown of structureSection ABars 1-18

Section BBars 18-34

Section A’Bars 35-43

Section CBars 44-58

Section A”Bars 59-66

Every instrument in the orchestra gets to play in this section , but only for a bar or two at a time. They play in groups:Clarinets, bass clarinet and bassoons play one melodic fragment, followed by the trumpets and trombones, and so on - the little bits of tunes are passed around the orchestra

This section starts off very loud, but drops down to pp in bar 6

Again all the instruments in the orchestra get to play in this section, but this time most parts play alone.

They’re all playing different rhythms and the parts overlap. Towards the end of this section, almost every instrument is playing at the same time, though not the same rhythms – it has a very thick texture.

Section B starts off very quietly, but the dynamics build up quickly

The hexachord from bar 8 is played again by the horns

This section has a thin texture – there are solo lines for the cello and double bass.

There a few loud semiquaver triplets, but most of this section is calm and quiet

Peripetie finishes with another variation on Section A.

The instrumentation builds up from just the clarinets and strings until the whole orchestra plays a fff chord in bar 64.

The piece finishes with a pp chord in the horns and double bass.

Motifs introduced in quick succession

Motifs developed and combined in counterpoint

Calmer sections that develop many of the motifs from section 1 in reverse order

Motifs combined in counterpoint

Hexachords used in this piece:• We first hear the hexachord in the opening woodwind hexatonic fanfare. A hexachord is a set

of six notes that can be used as a chord or a melody

• The first hexachord is made up of the following notes rearranged into a scale order:

• C sharp D E F G sharp A

½ 1 ½ 1 ½ ½

• The sustained chord heard on horns in b8-13 is also a hexachord. Look at the organisation of the intervals:

• A B flat C C harp E F

½ 1 ½ 1 ½ ½

The same spacing of intervals!